Do Away With Public Schools

As for schools teaching kids about the common culture and all that, as a
conservative I couldn't agree more. But is there evidence that public
schools are better at it? The results of the 2006 National Assessment of
Educational Progress history and civics exams showed that two-thirds of U.S.
high school seniors couldn't identify the significance of a photo of a
theater with a sign reading "Colored Entrance." And keep in mind, political
correctness pretty much guarantees that Jim Crow and the civil rights
movement are included in syllabi. Imagine how few kids can intelligently
discuss Manifest Destiny or free silver.

Right now, there's a renewed debate about providing "universal" health
insurance. For some liberals, this simply means replicating the public
school model for health care. (Stop laughing.) But for others, this means
mandating that everyone have health insurance - just as we mandate that all
drivers have car insurance - and then throwing tax dollars at poorer folks
to make sure no one falls through the cracks.

There's a consensus in America that every child should get an education, but
as David Gelernter noted recently in the Weekly Standard, there's no such
consensus that public schools need to do the educating.

Really, what would be so terrible about government mandating that every kid
has to go to school, and providing subsidies and oversight when necessary,
but then getting out of the way?

Milton Friedman noted long ago that the government is bad at providing
services - that's why he wanted public schools to be called "government
schools" - but that it's good at writing checks. So why not cut checks to
people so they can send their kids to school?

What about the good public schools? Well, the reason good public schools are
good has nothing to do with government's special expertise and everything to
do with the fact that parents care enough to ensure their kids get a good
education. That wouldn't change if the government got out of the school
business. What would change is that fewer kids would get left behind.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online,and the author of the book The Tyranny of Clichés. You can reach him via Twitter @JonahNRO.
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